mankeeping

It looks as if we are in for a spate of -keeping suffixes.  In July this year I dealt with kinkeeping, and now we have mankeeping.  Kinkeeping, you may recall, was the work of maintaining the social connections and wellbeing of the extended family, work that usually fell to the woman in the domestic partnership.

Mankeeping, according to two sociologists at Stanford University, Angelica Ferrara and Dylan Vergara, is the work undertaken by the female partner in maintaining the social relationships and wellbeing of the male partner in a heterosexual relationship.  In queer relationships partners keep their established independent networks without any fuss, but in a heterosexual relationship there is this feeling that the partners must travel together  along social pathways usually mapped out by the woman.  That means that if, for some reason, the female partner is no longer there, the male partner can end up quite isolated and totally out of practice in forming associations with others. This used not to be so. Men did stuff with other men. But increasingly that male camaraderie and independence is disappearing.